Business Integrity Trainings for the Healthcare Sector in Argentina

The Argentine pharmaceutical sector accountsfor 6% of the country's gross industrial product and has been growing steadily since 2000. However, there is a high risk of corruption in the healthcare sector. “Of the $7.5 trillion spent globally on health each year, $500 billion is lost to corruption”, affirms Transparency International. For this reason, the Argentine Chamber of Submissions, Implants and Medical Devices (CADIEM) decided to focus even more on integrity and corruption prevention. In order to provide corruption prevention trainings for its members and their supply chains, the Chamber approached the Alliance for Integrity in 2018. The aim was to develop a training programme that is specifically oriented towards the needs of companies working in the Argentinian healthcare sector. Together with its broad trainer network and implementation partners in the country, namely the German-Argentine Chamber of Commerce - AHK Argentina and the UN Global Compact Network Argentina, the Alliance for Integrity has adapted the training material and hosted three corruption prevention trainings for members of CADIEM.

During the training sessions, the participating companies learnt how to identify and mitigate possible corruption risks in their industry, how to deal with grey areas and how to set up effective compliance measures. Key challenges include, for example, interactions with commercial agents and responsible promotion. Dorothea Garff, Senior Associate of Beccar Varela and trainer of the first session, stated: “The openness, the questions and the ideas of the participants show that there is a common conviction to stop ‘business as usual’ by thinking about innovative ways to stop accepting corruption in the local health sector.”

Participants highlighted the practical approach of the training programme and the profound experience of the trainers. “I thank the trainers for sharing their experiences and concrete case studies. The clarity with which the topics were presented will make it much easier to develop and implement an integrity programme in my company,” mentioned one of the participants.
The sector-specific training programme gained even more relevance in times of the pandemic, as integrity and transparency are essential to ensure that limited resources are distributed fairly. Due to the constraints caused by the pandemic, the Alliance for Integrity has transformed its training programme into a digital format. Representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can now attend the corruption prevention training from anywhere in the world. In addition, a new adaptation of the content was necessary to address new risks in the sector, such as data protection issues.

Advancing digitalisation allows even more business owners and representatives of SMEs to benefit from the rich experience and shared knowledge of compliance experts who are part of the Alliance for Integrity’s network. All upcoming trainings can be found here.

Author: Fernando Orn & Carolina Echevarria